Sorrow and Woe
by LittleFoxGirl
Summary: Sorrow and Woe, the darkness of the 41st millineum has just got even darker and more sinister. The Divided Imperium, a glorious empire of Chaos, has arisen to take on the crumbling and corrupt Imperium of Man in full scale war, and the worshippers of the Corpse Emperor are loosing. In the depths of Woe, the Princess of Nurgle stirs, a new victim for her twisted work has arrived...
1. Chapter 1: The New Arrival

_Sorrow and Woe, the darkness of the 41st millineum has just got even darker and more sinister. The Divided Imperium, a glorious empire of Chaos, has arisen to take on the crumbling and corrupt Imperium of Man in full scale war, and the worshippers of the Corpse Emperor are loosing. In the depths of Woe, the Princess of Nurgle stirs, a new victim of her twisted work has arrived..._

**ALL OCs BELONG TO ME OR MY BLACK CRUSADE CREW! This is based off a really amazing black crusade campaign I took part in. Rated M for future blood, gore, sexual themes, and just plain awesomeness. This is one of my first extensive 40k fanfictions. Comments welcome and encouraged, flames are not as much but I accept critiques :3 **

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The procession of Hardradegard Bloodborn marched the hovering, void-shielded gurney down the black iron, red lit hallway. Outwardly, they were the personification of Divided's military elite. Inwardly, each was more terrified than he had been in the death camps where he had been trained, or in the warzones he had traveled to in the eternal war against the blind Imperium. There are few persons in the galaxy who would not have been. This was, after all, Woe , the lair of the master of the Divided's Dark Mechanicum. Razor, the Viral Princess. A place that has gained a reputation of myth and legend amongst ranks of the Divided's regime and a place of terror and sorrow even to those who worship the Ruinious Powers. In the dim red lights of the hallway, eerie shadows danced, making the men feel uneasy. A servitor or two passed by and a group of hushed-toned Dark Mechanicus watched them as they paraded past in silence. They reached a huge ceramite door at the end of a grand hallway and one of the Bloodborn punched a key into a pad on the wall. The men readied gasmasks before they entered. With a loud hiss and creak the door opened to allow passage; a noxious gas pooled along the ground, flowing outward into the hallway. The leather of their jackboots sizzled.  
Many of them hesitated to enter the bleak, dark chamber, the commanding officer had to hurry them along into the darkness; it never bodes well to dawdle on Woe. The room itself is huge, stretching far down to an enormous insignia of Nurgle's symbol that leaked greenish gas. Along the columned walls - a mockery to Adeptus Mechanicus structures on forge worlds across the Imperium - hung large banners with interchanging symbols of Chaos and Nurgle. Along the sides, breathing heavily in the low hanging mist, were large machines, broken dreadnaughts with huge cables coming from them. The beleaguered machines moaned, their internal tortures only to be guessed at. The soldiers hear the horrifying cries of people being experimented on, probed, the sounds of spinning drills and saws filled their uneasy ears. Dark Mechanicus and servitors of all kinds scurried across the room, doing their devious work. The procession took notice of two Astartes suspended in tanks of greenish water, naked. Samples were being taken from them by a swarm of needle-appendages. One particular servitor wheeled by pushing a cart filled with tubes - both large and small - of various nasty looking liquids. The Bloodborn reached the end of the hallway and on a throne-like iron seat sat a tall woman with very long bleached white hair. If she was standing up would be to her waist, but sitting, naked as she was, it pooled on her shoulders and lap.  
Her slender body was covered in scars and mechidendrite ports, leaking black liquid and inflamed. Her thin skin was a pale, sickly green and almost seemed to shift and move underneath. They could tell some of her tendons and muscles were artificial through the almost translucent skin. She is wearing a half gasmask, only her eyes show and they were closed. Dark circles suggested lack of sleep or death. Connected to her back were hundreds of tubes and cables of all sizes snaking up the columns behind her and into the wall. In front of the woman was a panel that her hands danced across, typing in codes. One of her arms was mechanical up to the elbow, each digit sharply clawed at the tip like a bird of prey. Suddenly, before the commander could speak a very large Astartes drifted in front of them in full armor, a tech marine by the equipment on his person. He had long white hair down to his sholders , pale green skin and a gasmask in place of helm. The sigil of Grandfather Nurgle on his right pauldron seeped black ooze from the vents. The Astartes crossed his arms in from of his broad chest angrly.  
"No one seems the mistress, what are you scum doing in here?" His voice was low and snarling like a dog protecting a bone. The commander in charge stepped forward hesitantly but before the terrified man could speak, a mechanical voice came from behind the traitor Astartes. "Marus, let the pathetic meat-bags speak." The harsh mechanical voice came from Razor, who was now standing, eyes open, from her throne, still stark naked with cables attached to her back.  
"Mistress you've interrupted your sleep...let me deal with such vermin." He answered, turning around towards his Lady of Rot. Her reptilian milky iris' observed the men before her, analyzing.  
"Who has sent you to my planet commander?" She asked in a surprisingly calm tone, the frantic insanity that once caused her nervous ticks and shifty eyes is calmed and cold. With a sudden hiss and ripping sound the cables detached themselves from her back and two attendants attached a backpack with tubes connecting to her mask, draping a black tattered robe over her shoulders she walked gracefully down the steps, her naked body still showing. She stopped next to Marus, standing taller then the Hardradigardian commander and his men, but shorter then the Astartes. Her stare cold and calculating she asked again.  
"Why are you meat-bags here on my planet? What is this?" She looked at the gurney, on it is the unconscious form of what looks like a man. The corrupt void shield, which left the body and gurney in a violet haze, fell away as one of the Bloodborn taps a control. The commander began to explain.  
"This Imperial agent, an Inquisitor if you note the rosette," indeed, Razor saw, pinned upon the breast of his elegantly simple brown leather coat was the symbol of the hated Inquisition, "has been captured by our forces in a lightning raid against Warmaster Klees main encampment on Ferrius II. It is believed he holds vital intelligence, and his holiness the Thrice Damned has himself requested you break him."  
Razor looked intently at the unconscious and bloodied body of the Inquisitor, she ran a clawed finger along the edge of his stubble-darkened chin. She then back at the soldiers with a twisted face. She glided up to them, staring with predatory eyes.  
"How dare you command me weakling! I do not take orders from underlings," She leaned closer to the commander, who swallows hard at the sigh of her terrifying eyes. She ran a metal claw along his chin, drawing blood.  
"You are lucky I am not hungry." They shook in their armor as the Princess of Decay cackled and straightened her back.  
"You are dismissed, Marus show these gentlemen the way out," she said as the Astartes steps forward growling menacingly. Without hesitation they hurried off out of the room, disappearing from sight.  
Auspex confirming the swift departure of the Bloodborn upon a Helix class frigate, Razor considered the prisoner. The commander had given her a dataslate dossier on this Inquisitor, indeed Lord Inquisitor, Zevren Deckard. While a serpentine mechadendrite downloaded the information directly into her cortex, her eyes ran across the mans body and clothing, taking in everything. Her appraisal was interrupted by the disturbing lack of relevant information on this man.  
What in the warp does Divided want me to do with this, she thought.  
Crossing the many laboratories, vivisectorums, and experimentariums that make up the machine-world of Woe, she made her way to the onyx sheathed sphere of her personal astrotelepathic array. Within its flanged, circular interior she stood, blasting out a stream of scrape-code. With a distant backdrop of the moaning of captive psykers, the array began to shift and swim, mirroring, for an instant, the holy unreality of the warp. Before she could fully dive into its infinite insanity, however, the image of a vast chamber coalesced. Easily the size of small warships, the room's ceiling is lost to sight. All about the floor are etched geometries: perfect non-angles, the mathematical properties of the impossible. There is a throne, huge and imposing, made simply of a single block of inky black stone. Behind this great seat, filling the back quarter of this immense domicile, are instruments, weapons, and artifacts beyond compare, each more horrifying and potent than the last. And then, of course, there was the figure upon the throne, shrouded, as he was, in a cloak of shifting black smoke.

The high seat of Divided, Thrice Damned, Prophet of Chaos, and True Prince of Daemon, had not been made to impress. Invariably, it had that effect, and its master enjoyed this symptom of its design, but truth be told, the immensity of his chamber had a more practical purpose. Filling a third of his Capitol battleship, Eternal War, it had been made to accommodate every king, warlord, high priest, and champion that paid him homage. In recent years, despite being the width and breath of a city, it had been unable to fit them all at once.  
Sitting upon his throne, Divided threw the enormity of his unrivaled psykic might to the various sectors and sub-sectors where his Black Crusade bled the Imperium. It took several moments before he returned his gaze to his surroundings, and found the flickering representation of Razor standing before him. Breathing a deep sigh, he gestured magnanimously before him.  
"My Princess of Rot, how kind of you to join me. I had been expecting you, there was no need to keep so quiet." Inside, his multifaceted intellect knew that she had waited out of respect. Even for one such as her, it did not do to disrespect the Prince of Daemons. Despite knowing this, he had no reason to be discourteous; after all, she had been a companion of his back at the very beginning of his glorious Crusade.  
"Your highness," her giggling voice bubbled with renewed insanity, "how naughty of you to tease me with an Imperial guinea pig. There are so many interesting things I could learn, many studious ways I could break him. But there must be a reason you specifically gave him to me."  
Divided laughed, the sound of his barking, bestial humor inviting and comforting, even for a twenty foot tall demi-god straight from mans first visions of hell.  
"Indeed he is a special gift, one I think you might appreciate. This gift," and he gestured at a large box of intricately carved wood that rested on his thigh, "put me in the mood for giving."  
Razor notes the box, and, with disgust, realizes that it is covered with Imperial devotions and scenes from the life of some saint.  
"Where," she spits out, "did you get that!"  
Divided, still jovial, opens the box, to reveal the bones of a human skeleton.  
"Why, from Asdrubael Vect! He sent this to me, shielded in a particularly baffling combination of refractor and Gellar field. I could not discern what it was until I opened it. It was in thanks for the inclusion of the Kabals in my Black Crusade," Divideds eyes grew cold, "though he made me earn them by burning as much of Commorragh as I could lay my hands on. Regardless, when I opened it I was most surprised, for my daemon-hosts that usually serve as my bodyguard began to burn! I had to seal them in the Dark Holds here on the Eternal War until I can find suitable hosts for them."  
With comical daintiness, the Daemon Prince lifts a femur between clawed thumb and forefinger, gesturing with it like some genteel noble.  
"This, I have learned, is the skeleton of one of the many forgotten lesser Imperial Saints, Saint Ward, whose only miracle was the banishment of the Daemon."  
Saying this, Divided popped the whole bone into his mouth with obvious relish. The sounds of crushed bone fragments and the working of his fanged mouth filled the area around the throne. With a voice now laden with cold fury and threat Divided speaks again.  
"What a thoughtful gift, I shall have to thank him, perhaps in person for his excellent taste."  
Razor shivers with terrified ecstasy as the wake of Divideds fury reverberates about the chamber. Her eyes glinted as she spoke.  
"I can only hope that you have given me a gift of similarly good taste."  
Divided barked another laugh, and again gestured magnanimously.  
" But in all seriousness My Lord, why have you given me this gift? I am sure this was not from the kindness of...heh...your own heart, there must be something you can gain from it?" She giggled again ooze dripping from her mask.  
"Quite so my dear, though I think that you will find he will be the key to the next stage of a certain piece of your research. This research, in turn, is the key to a new stage in my war against the decaying Imperium. Do you know the Ordo Militum?" She snorted.  
" Yes I've heard of it, I, unfortunately, do not know specifics of the branch.  
"Just so, they are little known and do not operate with a high degree of infamy. They are, however, horribly relevant. Amongst other things, these Imperial dogs attempt to police the un-liberated and blind Adeptus Astartes of the Corpse-Emperor."  
Divided sneered down at Razor, relishing his next words.  
"Lord Inquisitor Zevren Deckard has become, to that end, an expert on Space Marine gene-seed."  
A wide, sadistic grin spread across her mask, which was in fact a fanged maw, at the mention of Astartes gene-seed. An insane cackle erupted from her throat, echoing through the great hall.  
"Oh My Lord," she bowed low, looking at the floor, "this is a most gracious and productive gift. I will extract the information from him through any means necessary. Hopefully he does not break too soon."  
She looked back up with a wide, evil, fanged smile while her long black tongue hung out. Razor laughed insanely at the cruel and merciless ideas running through her broken mind.  
"Do not take too long, my Dark Mechanicus needs to remain productive. But do not," and the menace in Divideds voice gained the mass and taste of a dying star, "do not dare to waste him, or lose the secrets he holds.  
"I wouldn't dare waste such a precious subject. I intend to use him to my full advantage. For the glory of the Empire and the Gods of Chaos." Razor replies, her levity and joyfulness removed from her tone at the sound of his voice. She straightened her back again.  
" I will update you my Lord on my progress." With that said the hologram disappears, leaving Divided alone to his own thoughts.


	2. Chapter 2: Torture

**Chapter 2 of Sorrow and Woe, sorry it took so long to update. **

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Time seemed irrelevant at that moment. Only the low rumbling of far off machinery indicated that time, indeed, existed. For Zevren, time seemed not to exist at all. He had no idea when or where he was, only the darkness and the slow ache of his muscles were there to greet him when he woke up. He had no idea how long he spent in that dark cell, splayed out on a gurney his hands and legs bonded to the table. He could tell his armor, long coat, equipment and belongings were stripped from him, all but his pants.

At first when he awoke, he was calm and cold. He knew he had been captured and he knew that if they wanted to kill him they wouldn't have captured him. Logically, he concluded, they needed information from him. He laid in the dark, every muscle and bone ache with residual pain. He had no idea how long he lay there in silence until he saw, above his very eyes on the black ceiling, were ever-shifting chaotic runes and symbols in endless colors he couldn't even describe. When he tried to look away, they drew his eyes back, burning into his retinas. He tried to break from his bonds countless times. After what felt like weeks, he screamed and insulted at the top of his lungs, challenging the darkness. He screamed his throat bloody and raw but no replies came except for the occasional servitor that would enter the dark cell and check on the machinery beside his table, the only source of light in the room, or take samples from his body like blood and chunks of his flesh. He would yell himself into a brief, nervous sleep.

He could feel the sting as some sort of medicae tech stuck in his arm, feeding him nutrients and only the Emperor knows what else. He knew he was being drugged, he only wished to rip the injectors from his arms that were pumping the vile contaminates into his body. He would do so, if only to rid him of the horrid, nightmarish fits and delusions he would slip into from time to time. In his mind he recited prayers and litanies over and over again, trying to silence his screaming. It was painfully obvious that brute force would not work here. He tested the strength of his bonds over and over again, ending in his bulging muscles growing weaker and exhausted. Feelings of hopelessness and embarrassment clawed at the corners of his mind. He had never felt so alone and helpless in his entire life, and it was driving him mad.

But in a moment all of that changed. The sudden hiss and creak of the door opening startled the Inquisitor. Two long tube lights flickered on, the burning white light like daggers to Zevren's tired retinas. The light cuts into his head like a razor blade causing searing, unbearable pain. His red, swollen eyes snap shut at the intrusive awakening. It took time for the Lord Inquisitor to adjust to the sudden change in surroundings but when he opened his dark green eyes, in the doorway stood a grotesque and slender human-sized ink blot and a hulking mass behind. When his vision become clear again, he sees terror before him.

What at first he thinks is a daemon, when he looks closer it looks like what-was-once a human tech priest of the Adeptus Mechanicus. His eyes travel up Lady Razor's body as she stood next to the table, attention focused a data slate. Revulsion rose up inside of him, at the sight of something so wrong and so disgraceful. His vision shifted to the hulking mass in the doorway, knowing immediately that it was a traitor Astartes. Marus stood there, the skull on his left shoulder pad wept disgusting black ooze and a hazing mist encircled his massive form. He was watching the Inquisitor like a predator watches his prey, his gaze was unsettling and forced Zevren to look away. A thin, wiry Dark Mechanicus slinked in the room after them, moving to a medicae apparatus beside the bed.

Finally the Viral Princess turns her attention to her prisoner, a wicked smile of overlapping mutated teeth spreads across her mask as she observes him. He refused to make eye contact with such a beast of Chaos.

"Ah Inquisitor Deckard...how are we doing today?" She said with a harsh, sadistic voice. The question was not so much addressed to him but to the assistant heretic, who, oddly enough, gave a quick bow before the monster before speaking." The patient is responding well to the medicine, he should not be an issue" The man says with a deep highly mechanical voice, to be expected of his ilk. Zevren did not care for mechanics heretic or not. Bad blood with them in the past scarred his image of them forever, finding them weak and greedy. In his opinion, the Adeptus Mechanicus were fools to strip away their humanity for the knowledge they so craved.

Razor handed the data slate to the assistant as he slinked out of the room; she looked intently at the tube of fluid running into his veins. Deckard noticed some of her fingers were artificial, syringes imbedded into her bones where digits should have been. The doctor injected one of her fingers into the tube, red liquid mixed with the pale yellow. Then her pale, sunken , reptilian eyes met his, filling him with a cold chill. She leaned closer pushing aside his long hair to get a better look at his battered face.

"For an Imperial pig you are not bad looking, Inquisitor. Too bad I will have to ruin such a handsome face." Her voice harsh, mechanical and cold filtered air hit his face. It was a foul stench that emanated from her mask filter was too horrible for him to describe. It stunk of decay and slaughter, blood and death. Her clawed mechanical hand held onto his stubble chin.

Deckard was about to retort, to tell her that no torture she could level would ever dent his faith in his Emperor, nor his loyalty to the Throne of Terra. He didn't answer, because he was wrong. When the pale, viscous yellow solution was pumped into his blood, he knew the truest definition of pain. His body wracked with agony, his muscles pulled so hard that his bones began to warp, and the steel bindings holding him creaked. In those moments, if he had been able to speak, he would have begged, pleaded for the chance to tell Razor everything. Every breath felt like swallowing a thousand shards of glass, ripping, tearing at his jugular. He could only hear in those moments of heart-stopping agony the dreadful chuckles of his hostess, a hash sound like something wicked and sharp scrapping against metal.

As his clenched muscles unraveled, he tasted copper and blood in his mouth, feeling his bones groan back into place, and his body go limp. For long moments he lay there, while the universe slipped in and out of focus. Something in the dancing runes above his head stayed, however, cackling with delight at his agony. He thought he could hear a name there, a whisper, but just before he could truly grasp it, things swam back into focus.

"I," he gasped, "I will tell you nothing, warp spawned filth!"

Razor leaned down, running a hand along his jaw. As fresh pain erupted from the contact, for the first time he realized he had crushed his teeth. Their pain and sensation felt so little now.

"I know, dear one, I know, and I don't expect you to tell me anything." She turned from him and with a ghastly cough, walked out of the room. The steel door shut behind Razor, the light flickering and finally blinking out. Again, those runes danced and glowed above his eyes in the pitch blackness, he could hear whispers, faint sounds and voices from the nothingness. They were too distant for the Inquisitor to grasp onto. The symbols, the voices drew his mind to linger longer and longer on the very idea of their twisted corruption. Deckard was too exhausted, too weak to turn his gaze from the shifting symbols of the Ruinous Powers.

Days passed, months. It could have been years, for all Deckard could tell. His mind was unhinged day and night by constantly changing cocktails of psychoactive drugs and other things he dare not imagine. He became immune to the basic horrors of his prison – the menacing machines and silently laboring servants of Chaos – by virtue of his strained psych, and for this, at least, he was thankful. Inevitably however, this ended with the wicked hiss of the door sliding open to reveal the Mistress of the Dark Mechanicus again. In tow, hovering off the ground, pieced by spikes and lashed by chains of rusted, dark iron, was a decrepit psyker. His eyeless head was suffused by a dirty red aura, and his unmoving mouth uttered a string of inane babble.

"Good Morning, Inquisitor!" The tech priest said with unusual glee and enthusiasm. "How are we doing today? I've brought you a little present!" She gestured to the jittering psyker in a profound and obnoxiously mocking way. In an ironically twisted thought, Deckard had to admit she was the liveliest of tech priests he had ever seen. The runes glowed and twisted more chaotically with the presence of the insane psyker.

"This," Razor hissed through her oozing masked mouth, "is Zael. A good pet. He delights in the same things I do."

Razor ran a scalpel blade down the psykers back, making swirling cut patterns. Blood dripped down Zael's back in a small, cascading rain plinking off the metal decking. The incoherent whispers of the psyker intensified with the sound of swarming insects and scratching claws.

"I think I'll leave you two together. Play nice!" Her last words dripped from her mask as a long black tongue licked the grime away from her fangs. She slowly left the room and soon, the Inquisitor was alone with Zael.

"The Emperor pro-" was all the Inquisitor managed before the world exploded behind his eyes. Fire laced his synapses, and his mind fractured, found coherence, and fractured again, a billion times a billion times. Memories were dragged to the surface, annihilated, and replaced by nightmares. The entirety of the man named Zevren Deckard, servant of the Holy Orders of The Inquisition, seemed to be undone. Only a small part of his mind, a most sacred, and determined piece of his soul survived the onslaught. His work, mingled with such strong portions of his personality as his faith and determination, was held under the silver aegis of his duty. No matter how the hurricane blew, tore, burned, or seethed about this part, it could not penetrate. That did not stop Zevren Deckard, Lord Inquisitor, from relearning his definition of ultimate pain. It was not until after, whenever after was in relation to the inferno of endless agony that he had suffered, that he could appreciate just what he had endured. Zael, with all the cruelty and malice of Chaos, gave Deckard back himself, the core of the man that had been temporarily destroyed, and nothing else. Deckard sobbed for weeks, tortured by the sting of half-remembered memories now lost, of places and names and times now lost to him, and the horrors that had replaced them. It took him ages to hear the whispers from the ceiling again. They were louder than before, and though stringing tears still steamed down his face, his mouth cracked into a anguished grin.

"Oh hello there," he whispered, "who are you, little thing, talking thing?" The whispers, holding the only glimmer of comfort in the weeks he had been in captivity, spoke to him. A soft, female voice called to him, beckoning his name, saying things he could not understand but still brought him a shred of comfort as tears ran down his dirty pale face.

"Secrets….oh secrets…" was all the voice said before it faded back into mere murmurs. He did not realize that Zael was just floating there, watching him. Deckard had no recollection of time or space; it was all twisted together in a single moment. For hours he sat, trying to call the voice back. But the sudden sound of the door hiss jolted him out of the trance he fallen into. The Dark Mistress walked inside again, accompanied by Marus, the plague marine.

"Did we play nicely now?" She said after a quick harsh wheeze. Drool spattered on the floor, Deckards only answer. Razor rasped a laugh at this. Things had been running smoothly indeed. Someone so mighty, so trained and conditioned, as a Lord Inquisitor, could not be broken by any normal means. Nor, indeed, by many abnormal means, including psychic torture. Anything in those arenas, the Imperium could perform equally as well as her, and actively protected their most important agents against such ghastly methods of extraction. She needed to use the weapons at her disposal no Imperial servant could truly comprehend. The insidious, slow burn of Chaos could corrupt anything. Even their Emperor had acknowledged this, during his rulings at Nikaea so long ago. It was this most perfect, original method of Chaos that she chose to employ.


End file.
